2024-05-12 22:20:58 ¶ ●

I’ve always loved Bedelia’s analogy for Hannibal. Person suit, she says, as though Hannibal wakes up every day and wears a costume. Then she amends, no, she says, it is more like a human veil, implying Hannibal is vaguely human, that is, when you look at a person who is wearing a veil, their details are vague, but you know their silhouette belongs to a human, and so they must be. That is how she sees him— someone that looks vaguely human, and so they must be, but really, behind the veil, he could be anything and she knows he’s not. So she calls it a “human” veil, a veil that gives him a human’s silhouette, tricking people into thinking “he looks human, so he must be” and then we go back to Will’s take on the Ripper being, “He looks normal and nobody can tell what he is.”